Corporate Integrity Project

NLPC seeks to promote integrity in corporate governance, including honesty and fair play in relationships with shareholders, employees, business partners and customers. In doing so, NLPC places special emphasis on:

* Asserting that the social responsibility of the corporation is to defend and advance the interests of the people who own the company, the shareholders. True responsibility is fidelity to one’s own mission, not someone else’s, or someone else’s political agenda.

* Exposing the seeking of influence on public officials by corporations, which is the inevitable result of high levels of government spending and intervention in the marketplace.

* Combating practices that undermine the free enterprise system, including philanthropic giving to groups hostile to a free economy.

Today NLPC released a letter to members of Congress responding to a letter from a Google front group called the Open Internet Coalition (OIC). The June 29th OIC letter raised concerns about the use of new technologies like deep packet inspection which the group argued could be used by governments to “spy on Internet communications, censor speech and prevent grassroots democratic activism and free expression.” The letter called for Congressional hearings on the deployment of such technologies.

In our response, we pointed out the hypocrisy of a Google front group calling for regulation of new technologies that can hypothetically be used to subvert free expression, when Google itself has already implemented technologies that do the very same thing in countries like China. Click here to download a four-page pdf of the letter.

I pointed out that it’s some of the very “edge providers” that OIC holds up as “innovators” … Read More ➡

In a June 30 letter to the White House, Wal-Mart endorsed Obama’s health care plan. The letter was jointly signed by Andrew Stern, boss of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and John Podesta, who led the Obama transition team and is chief executive of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

Although the move was unexpected to some, it was no surprise to NLPC. In a Special Report published in 2006 and updated in 2008, I chronicled the company’s move to the Left in a futile campaign to placate liberal critics like Wal-Mart Watch, funded by SEIU. On major issues except for “card check,” Wal-Mart has become a powerful tool of liberal activist groups.

Obama’s plan includes an employer mandate to vastly increase government control over health care ostensibly to provide coverage to 46 million uninsured Americans. Wal-Mart’s support represents a betrayal of the large segment of … Read More ➡

Already embroiled in an ethics probe now entering its tenth month, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, received more bad news Wednesday night as the House ethics committee announced it would look into Caribbean trips taken by the veteran lawmaker and four other Democrats.

In a statement released late Wednesday night, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), the chairwoman and ranking member of the ethics committee, announced that the panel had voted to create a four-member investigative subcommittee to determine whether the trips violated House gift rules.

An investigation into a trip taken by members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is triggering a backlash against the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s signature ethics proposal.

CBC members, frustrated at what they perceive as an accusation by a conservative group that’s been blown out of proportion, last week formed a working group to look at taking on the 2006 resolution that created the OCE.

The junket to sunny St. Maarten took place the weekend after the election in 2008. I attended in order to document violations of House Rules that prohibit corporate sponsorship of travel and hospitality.

The trip was funded by “lead sponsor” Citigroup, a major recipient of bailout funds, which contributed $100,000. Other sponsors included IBM, AT&T, Verizon, Pfizer, Macy’s and American Airlines.

Starbucks, that epitome of a socially-conscious corporation, is now the target of a campaign among self-styled socially-conscious activists. One can understand why radical activists would go after discount retail behemoth Wal-Mart. But who would have thought they’d have classy Starbucks in their sights? Last month, Brave New Films, an independent documentary production company based in Culver City, California, launched its “Stop Starbucks” campaign. The website features a four-minute video on YouTube alleging mistreatment by the company of its employees, plus a petition demanding Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz “quit following Wal-Mart’s anti-union example.” Within a week, nearly 12,000 viewers signed it. The campaign also features a Twitter attack, replete with messages like “I want my union with my latte” and “Schultz makes millions, workers make beans.”

All this somehow makes sense. The head of Brave New Films is Robert Greenwald, producer of the 2005 anti-corporate agitprop feature, “Wal-Mart: The High … Read More ➡

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda: ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, excluding opposing voices on the debate.

ABC is going one step further than NBC did in 1993 when it broadcast a health care special, paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, favorable to Hillary’s health care plan. This time, ABC is cutting out the special interest group, and is directly flacking for the White House.

From my book titled The First Lady: A Comprehensive View of Hillary Rodham Clinton, … Read More ➡

The South’s Grand Hotel is trying to collect a grand sum of money it claims is owed by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit civil rights group.

The Peabody hotel has filed a lawsuit in Shelby County Circuit Court against Sharpton’s National Action Network seeking payment of almost $70,300, plus more than $17,000 in attorney’s fees and other costs. The lawsuit, which puts the total close to $88,000, was filed Tuesday…

The Peabody was the site of the 2008 national convention of the National Action Network (NAN). Corporate sponsors included Abbott Laboratories, Allstate, American Honda, Anheuser-Busch (since acquired by InBev), Chase Foundation, Chrysler, Colgate-Palmolive, Continental Airlines, Entergy, FedEx, Ford, GM, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Pfizer, UPS Foundation and Wal-Mart.

Dr. Carl Horowitz of the NLPC staff attended as an uninvited observer. Colgate-Palmolive accepted a ‘corporate excellence’ award, which NLPC asked the company … Read More ➡

The House ethics committee is investigating an alleged quid pro quo between Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and an oil company executive, the subject of a lengthy New York Times article published in December.

Eugene Isenberg, the oil executive accused of trying to influence Rangel through a $1 million donation to the education center bearing Rangel’s name, is cooperating with an ethics committee investigation into the matter and predicts that the panel will find no wrongdoing.

The assertion was caught on tape during a conversation with Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog that has investigated several ethics stories about Rangel. Flaherty approached Isenberg at the company’s annual meeting in Houston last week, taped the conversation and provided The Hill a transcript and audio recording.